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Read it, comment, and share it with your friendsDon’t tell me you love me
I have seen a few websites lately using a very important term in a very loose way. The term is “love” and it conjures images of long walks on the beach and fetuccini alfredo. But love is not a thing to be taken lightly. If you say you love someone, you really have to mean it. I believe that and I live by it. So you can imagine how dissappointed I am when I see things like this:
(In case you have trouble reading this, the text about the logo says “loves you.”) Flickr loves me? Really? Maybe Flickr loves my $24.95 a year. Sure, I might like Flickr a lot, and I might even say that I like like Flickr. But I don’t love Flickr. Flickr and I have not developed our relationship enough to begin thinking about complicated feelings like love. I mean, I don’t even know Flickr all that well, or the people behind it. We have a business relationship, if anything at all, and for Flickr to tell me that it loves me in passing, as if it is such a simple and easy thing, is absolutely shameful. And if Flickr thinks that I am easy enough to just smile and let my guard down under the false pretense of affection, well, Flickr is dead wrong. I am not going to reciprocate. My love isn’t won that easily.
I can’t understand what marketing department (or executives who think they are marketers) thought this bastardization of the institution of love was a good idea. All that this indicates is that Flickr is a shallow friend, one who tries to love everyone without even trying to build deep and lasting relationships. You can’t have everyone, Flickr. It doesn’t work that way. I’m special, and if you want to love me, you have to pick me over everyone else. Otherwise, take your love and hit the highway, because I don’t want it.
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12 Comments
Responses to my articleHaha, do I sense sarcasm/satire?
Although in all seriousness, the word love has been degraded a great deal. I still sort of put it on a pedestal though. Aside from close relatives, I’ve never told anyone I love them - which can put you in a fairly awkward position at times. I just find it’s used too… ‘loosely’ and loses meaning.
Sort of like, if you say a word over and over again, it loses meaning. Perhaps I need to find another word is all.
I’ve always considered that love to be the kind of love that a cat feels for his owner. When you feel something warm, and you realize that he’s curled around your leg.
That’s when I usually shake it off and run for my life.
I think it might have something to do with their blog post. Two ppl that met on flickr got married.
Even so Paul, I wasn’t invited to the wedding.
Paul - I don’t think it has anything to do with the wedding. That blog post was posted yesterday. Flickr has been loving us since the end of May. I hate it.
I would have liked to have seen “Delta”, although still totally pretentious, not as bad as “Loves You”
Good to see someone defending the deeper value of love.
Well done Christian, I’ve been reading The Montoya Herald for some time now, and I find your thoughts amusing at worst and brilliant at best. This post was both. Keep them coming.
more like ‘Y! loves you’ for all those that had to get a Y! ID to continue their flickr accounts
Thanks TRDR.
Very true, BillyG. As much as Flickr tries to hide it, it’s really Yahoo! in sheep’s clothing.
“Welcome to Costco. I love you.“
I agree with Charlie. The word has been downgraded, and is used way too loosely. Soon we’ll be using the term “love love” to describe actual, real love.
I question why, if flickr loves you, you have to pay them? Seems the wrong way ’round to me. (Although actually, that makes it sound like I believe you should pay the people you love which is an odd idea…) Hmm.
I liked this entry very much.
I LOVE this entry.
I love it because this is so you and I think everyone knows by now that I love you (forrealz.) None of this false Flickr love.
Also, I agree with how the word has lost it’s meaning with a lot of people. It makes me think of a certain person I know from high school who ends all her conversations on the phone with “I love you.” It’s hard for me to believe that from her and it only makes me feel uncomfortable since I won’t say it back.
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